We have had an unusual life together with many adventures and misadventures. We met in a Sydney nightclub. In November 1968, I was on R&R from Vietnam, where I was an engineer rank EA2 in the US Navy Seabees.  Amongst five lovely Aussie girls seated at a table, I was lucky to pick Ellen. I managed 3 dates, and on my return to Vietnam, I felt she was fantastic and the one for me. I purchased an engagement ring at the PX and mailed it to her. Ellen, being more sensible, put the ring in the back of her dresser drawer and wrote that it would take a few more visits than that (at least she didn’t send it back). We continued to write, and I made 2 more R&R visits. I visited her hometown to meet her family, and by then we were engaged. We were married in May 1970, 17 days after I took my discharge in the Philippines, and we still put up with each other almost 55 years later.

Ellen became a registered nurse shortly after we married, and I worked as an engineer until I too decided to become a registered nurse, graduating in 1994. During our nursing careers, we worked in several hospitals, two prisons, and more than 70 remote Australian Aboriginal communities as relief nurses, and also in the remote Arctic with the Inuit of Nunavut in northeastern Canada. 

I also taught English in Vietnam during my extended tour of 10 months when stationed in Saigon and again many years later in the Czech Republic.  We also taught health subjects in the Aboriginal Health Worker program at Batchelor College in the Northern Territory of Australia. 

We also have managed to have 4 healthy and very successful children, and they have given us 13 grandchildren.

Our working lives have been spent helping and supporting people, and now in our “semi-retirement,” we hope to be able to continue that using today’s modern technologies. We hope you find something we can help you with.